You are here

Talking Points, Thanksgiving 2016

The Thanksgiving 2016 edition of the USC U.S.-China Institute's newsletter. It looks at giving Thanksgiving a Chinese flavor and includes our comprehensive calendar of China-centered events across North America.

We have much to be thankful for, including the many of you who attend our events, read our newsletter and web magazine, or watch or documentaries and presentations online. We’re grateful for the many partners who aid us in our efforts to inform public discussion about the U.S.-China relationship. Some of these are institutional backers, such as the Freeman Foundation which underwrites our teacher training program, and others are individual donors whose gifts, large and small, make the institute’s work possible. Each of you is essential to our efforts. Thank you.

Some previous Thanksgiving editions of Talking Points have featured Thanksgiving-themed recipes developed by noted Chinese American chefs. If you're still figuring out what to make tomorrow, you may appreciate these suggestions from Sylvia Wu (click here for an article/photos from her 100th birthday), Ming Tsai, and Martin Yan.

This year, Eastday, a state-owned Shanghai news website, has come up with a “Thanksgiving with Chinese characteristics menu.” Reporter Bao Yongting writes that the adjustments for Chinese stomachs begin with the bird. The turkey is a monster, she notes, to be filled with various things. Turkeys, though, are hard to come by in China and even though it’s hard to match the fragrance of a roasted turkey, Bao suggests a lemon chicken option with a vegetable stuffing. Pumpkin pie is replaced with pumpkin rice balls shaped like little pumpkins. Instead of cranberry sauce, Bao’s got a hawthorn sauce. Sounds tasty, right? Enjoy these photos and click here to give the recipes a try.

Back in 2011, we noted the rise in turkey consumption in China, including the establishment of a U.S.-style gourmet turkey restaurant in Beijing and the enduring popularity in Taiwan of Chiayi turkey rice (嘉義鶏肉飯). Chiayi turkey rice is still going strong, but Dianping, a restaurant review site, reports that the Beijing restaurant is

no more. China is now America’s second largest export market for turkey. That 2011 Talking Points also noted, however, that Chinese were getting into raising turkeys. Earlier this year an article from the “China Chicken and Egg” website sought to encourage Chinese poultry farmers to raise the birds, arguing that the meat is nutritious, that the profit potential was great, and noting that the Ministry of Agriculture had included it in its “China Spark Program” (星火计划) to modernize agriculture. Most Chinese, though, have yet to taste turkey.

No matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, and certainly no matter what you’re eating, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Please take care and feel free to write to us at uschina@usc.edu, to comment on our Facebook page, or to tweet us @usc_uschina.

Please support the USC U.S.-China Institute with a tax-deductible donation. We are eager to continue our efforts to inform public discussion of the multi-threaded and always changing U.S.-China relationship. We need your help.

As our students will soon be taking final exams, we have no events scheduled for the remainder of the term. We encourage you, however, to read recent issues of Talking Points or watch recent USCI events. These include:

USC students and scholars may participate in a manuscript review on Dec. 2. Rongdao Lai's Becoming Bodhisattva Citizens: Buddhist Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Republican China (1911-1949) will be discussed. Please click here for more information. Attendees are required to read the manuscript in advance. Sponsored by the USC East Asian Studies Center.

Film Screening: A Better TomorrowNovember 26, 2016 - 4:00pmWashington, District of ColumbiaThe Freer|Sackler Museum of Asian Art presents a screening of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow.

Violence in East Asian BuddhismNovember 29, 2016 - noonAnn Arbor, MichiganThe University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Jinhua Chen, Professor of East Asian Buddhism, The University of British Columbia.

Events

Things China Working Group is an informal group to explore research interest in the material networks, systems, economies, media and practices of communication pursued within China or between China and its national and international partnerships. Open only to USC graduate students and faculty.

Things China Working Group is an informal group to explore research interest in the material networks, systems, economies, media and practices of communication pursued within China or between China and its national and international partnerships. Open only to USC graduate students and faculty.